


Eight Nights

by Daegaer



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2004
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-05 16:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/pseuds/Daegaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley thinks angels are sneaky underhanded beings, not like honest straightforward demons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Nights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shayheyred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayheyred/gifts).



> Thank you to Louise Lux for betareading!

 

 

 

 

The first night, Crowley didn't even notice anything different in Aziraphale's shop. The angel normally put up some ratty bits of tinsel and coloured lights, and once Crowley had had his ritual yearly sneer at them they could be ignored. The only reason he was here, he told himself, was to see what the angel was up to. Aziraphale was up to _something_ , that was certain. His phone call had been very suspicious.

"You must be so busy at this time of year," Aziraphale had said, with rather too much innocence in his voice. "All that greed and misery to incite. You must be tired, Crowley. Why don't you come to the shop and I'll cook you dinner?"

So here he was, eating duck liver pate on toast so thin he suspected the angel had just miracled it that way, followed by a rather nice roast duck with even nicer roasted vegetables.

"In the park earlier, were you?" Crowley said with a grin.

"Sainsbury's," Aziraphale said cheerfully. "They had a rather interesting-looking pecan fudge pie, if I could tempt you to some dessert? Or doughnuts - I have some lovely fresh jam ones."

After dessert, and coffee and brandies, and another brandy to go on top of that, Crowley somehow managed to get on his feet.

"So what was the occasion?" he asked, staggering towards the door.

"No occasion," Aziraphale said.

"Not looking for a favour?" Crowley said, fishing for his car keys.

"Well, maybe a small one," Aziraphale said, leaning on the door and smiling as Crowley sagged into the driver's seat. "I went a bit haywire in my grocery shopping. You know how it is, all the nice seasonal stuff laid out - it's very --"

"Tempting?" Crowley suggested.

"Um. Well, anyway, the thing is, I bought rather a lot of stuff, and I was wondering if you might come to dinner again tomorrow?"

Crowley thought about it. Part of the pleasures of the holiday season was going to restaurants and watching the waiters have nervous breakdowns, but it might be nice not to have to eavesdrop on other diners for once, and he was sure Aziraphale was up to something that would need a spot of demonic wiles to get around.

"Yeah, okay," he said.

"Oh, _good!_ " Aziraphale said, and produced a little parcel from behind his back. "Before I forget," he said, holding it out.

"What's this?"

"Oh, it's nothing much," Aziraphale said dismissively, "I just saw it in a shop window and thought you might like it."

Frowning, Crowley ripped off the red and gold wrapping paper and opened the box. Inside was a toy car, a tiny black 1926 Bentley. He spun the little wheels and raised an eyebrow.

"That's very . . . thoughtful," he said. "Thank you."

"I'm glad you like it," Aziraphale said. "Same time tomorrow, then?"

"Same bat-channel," Crowley grinned, and sighed as the angel looked mystified. "Ciao!"

The next day, Aziraphale fed him a selection of light and delicious Japanese dishes, and gave him a pen with a little blue light that flashed on and off just before a mobile phone rang. It was a measure of how much sake they'd drunk that it seemed like the best entertainment in the world to spend a solid hour ringing Crowley's mobile from the phone in the back room of the shop. Crowley was very sure the next morning that he didn't remember anything to do with a karaoke machine.

The third evening, Aziraphale had gone for Italian, and Crowley devoured some very nice spinach-and-cheese stuffed tortellini and drank some very nice Chianti, and Aziraphale gave him a tasteful and heavy brushed steel corkscrew that wouldn't look at all out of place in his kitchen. Crowley was mildly pleased and amused that his sense of style was rubbing off _finally_. The thought crossed his mind that a demon could get used to this sort of thing; a heavy day's tempting was very nicely off-set by the knowledge that dinner would be waiting on the table and there'd be someone who really understood a demon's professional complaints. He examined the thought suspiciously. It seemed a bit wet to him at first, but then he realised that he was in fact taking advantage of the angel's hospitality, was replenishing his capacity for evil at the angel's expense, and he felt much better.

The fourth evening, Aziraphale seemed to have come over nostalgic, and had made a dish they both remembered from the seventeenth century, salmon poached in the juice of bitter oranges. He claimed the fried potato cakes had been all the rage at the time, not that Crowley cared one way or another. They sat around eating chocolate coins Aziraphale said he had left over from Halloween, and got quite giggly with reminiscences of King James and the respective books they'd been technical advisors on. (1) Aziraphale gave Crowley a slim and elegant appointment diary with his initials embossed on the cover.

The fifth evening, the food was Russian, and after Crowley had been defeated by borscht and blintzes and far too much vodka, Aziraphale gave him a little silver hip flask that, from the sound of it, was already charged up. Crowley went home secure in the knowledge that the angel wasn't up to anything, other than laying the groundwork for Crowley doing everything in January as usual. Aziraphale often got sentimental and lonely in the run-up to Christmas, and who was Crowley to stop him spending money on presents?

It was on the sixth evening that trouble struck. Crowley turned up early, and caught Aziraphale adding a candle to the candelabrum that had always been somewhat unobtrusively shoved to one side. In outraged horror, Crowley suddenly realised that it wasn't just that Aziraphale had run out of candles on previous days and forgotten to buy more.

"You bastard!" he shrieked. "You tricked me into celebrating Hanukkah!"

"Um," Aziraphale said, trying to hide the candles behind his back. "Well. Er."

Crowley marched right back out to the car, pursued by first an angelic whine and then by an angel.

"Dinner's ready, Crowley! Won't you stay? Please?"

Giving Aziraphale a glare that could melt steel, Crowley turned the key in the ignition and drove off. It wasn't _fair_ , he thought. Just when he'd come to the conclusion that Aziraphale hadn't been up to anything and was just being friendly - not, as he told himself sternly that he cared one way or another whether Aziraphale was friendly or not, they weren't friends after all, they had a strictly business Arrangement - anyway, it was galling to find the angel had tricked him so easily. The bastard was probably having a good laugh about it right now, and writing up a very embarrassing report to blackmail him with later. He'd never said anything about the time Aziraphale had got completely plastered and gatecrashed that Satanist ritual wearing what Crowley had thought at the time was a very unconvincing set of horns. Crowley had laughed so much that he hadn't even cared about the whole slew of them running straight off to a church and begging for forgiveness of sins. But that was a spur-of-the-moment _joke_ showing what a bastard Aziraphale really was, not an involved bit of trickery like the angel had pulled off against him this time. They weren't supposed to trick each other like that. They weren't supposed to work against each other. Well, all right, they _were_ supposed to work against each other, but Crowley still felt it was rather mean.

He drove back to Mayfair and stamped around his pristine, un-Christmas-decorated flat for a while before heading back out and terrorising waiters in a variety of restaurants across the city. Eating alone was a relief, he thought. There was no need to make polite conversation, no need to inquire as to another person's likes or dislikes in wine, no need to do anything except exactly what he himself wanted to do. No awkward topics to avoid, he thought, no stupid arguments to get embroiled in. No one to steal his dessert, he thought triumphantly, leaving most of it mashed onto his plate. This was much better. He drove drunkenly home at last, and collected all the stupid presents Aziraphale had given him over the week, and threw them in the bin.

He woke up still in a rage. He showered in a rage, stormed into his kitchen and ate toast in a rage and ended up pacing back and forth in his sitting room while his houseplants nervously looked as vibrantly healthy and glossy-leaved as they could. He was in such a foul mood that he thought he was foolhardy enough to brave a few department stores, and spent the whole day participating in and encouraging near riots over gaudy and useless things that no one would be happy to receive as gifts. By the time he came home again that night, he was in a much better mood. He pulled one of the expensive and calorie-laden ready meals from his fridge and put it in the microwave without reading the heating instructions, then immediately took it out again. (2) He wandered around his kitchen, the boiling-hot container of food in one hand, a fork in the other, nibbling his dinner and humming along to the music from the sitting room. What he needed, he thought, was a relaxing night in. There had to be _something_ worth watching on one of the hundred or so channels his TV picked up, no matter how much Aziraphale complained about them all being the same. He squashed thoughts of the angel down ruthlessly. A nice bottle of wine, he thought, and something funny on TV. Who needed company anyway? He _liked_ being alone.

He opened the bin to throw away the remains of his dinner and saw something move as the container hit it. Frowning, he rolled up a sleeve and plucked out the little toy Bentley. It was covered with the remains of his tikka masala and looked rather sorry for itself. Crowley spun one of the little wheels idly. It really was a rather good model. Aziraphale must have been so pleased to see it, he thought, and now he'd gone and messed it up. He waved his other hand, and it was clean and sparkling.

"There," he said to it. "Easily fixed."

He took it with him out into the sitting room, and wandered round, wondering where he could put it. It didn't really fit the decor. Maybe the office, he thought, and nipped upstairs to plonk it on his desk. No, that wasn't right either. He went next door, into his bedroom and put it on the bedside table. He never had anything on the table. He wasn't much for reading in bed, and his alarm clocks had learned to stay out of arm's reach for self-preservation. The light gleamed from the toy's shiny black surface as he rolled it back and forth with one finger. He sat on the edge of his bed and looked at it for a long time, the little black car in the middle of the empty table, looking up at last to feel himself dwarfed by the size and emptiness of his flat.

Then he went and saved the rest of the presents from the bin.

* * * * *

Aziraphale was sitting in his back room, looking through some of the books that the newspapers thought people should read over Christmas, when there was a polite ring on his doorbell. He was rather glad to put down the experimental novel he was struggling through, feeling that the experiment had failed and the author really should have included even a little bit of a plot. He opened the door to see a pink-cheeked Crowley. As it wasn't all that cold out, he thought the colour in the demon's cheeks might in some way be connected to the smell of alcohol drifting about him.

"Hello," he said.

"Hi," Crowley said casually. "Am I late for dinner?"

Aziraphale looked at him for a few moments, but the studied casual air didn't slip.

"No," he said, "no, you're not late. I was running a bit behind, as a matter of fact, come in, come in."

Crowley sauntered in and threw himself down in the chair Aziraphale had been sitting in. He picked up the novel with a grin.

"You know she sold her soul to win that prize, don't you?" he said.

"That would explain a lot," Aziraphale muttered, glad to have an excuse not to finish the blasted thing. He went into the kitchen and started distractedly pulling food out of cupboards. He had _nothing_ prepared, everything would take _hours_. He peeped back in at Crowley and saw the demon was looking distinctly worried and uncomfortable. _Silly fellow_ , Aziraphale thought, somewhat guiltily miracling all the vegetables peeled and chopped, and carefully putting a nice bit of beef in the oven, where it immediately found itself almost perfectly cooked. He put the vegetables on to simmer, and went out with a bottle of wine.

"You'll have a glass, my dear?" he said.

"Please," Crowley said. After a few mouthfuls of wine he added. "You can light your candle thingy, I don't mind."

"Thank you," Aziraphale said, smiling, and doing just that.

"The other days," Crowley said, picking up the carrier bag beside his chair, "I, er, left your presents behind. I only remembered to bring them today."

"Why, thank you," Aziraphale said happily. "I'll open them in a moment." He went into the shop and rummaged behind the counter, reappearing with three neatly wrapped parcels. "From the days you, er, couldn't make it," he said, handing two of them over, "and for today."

Crowley ripped the paper away with a rather grim smile of determined pleasure, which became a real smile when he saw the black marble paperweight with a neat clock set into its gleaming surface, the tiny digital camera and the pencil and ballpoint that matched his fountain pen. All of it was the kind of thing the sort of person he seemed to be would like. And he seemed to like them quite a bit, Aziraphale thought in relief. Aziraphale took the proffered bag and began opening his presents. They were all CDs, all new releases that had been favourably reviewed in the December BBC _Music_ magazine.

"Thank you," he said, "This is lovely - I'd planned on getting some of these after Christmas. I'll put one on now, shall I?"

"Sure, why not?" Crowley said. Aziraphale thought he hid the relief at the presents' reception rather well.

After they'd eaten, and were sitting with glasses of brandy listening to the music, Aziraphale smiled just a little wickedly at Crowley.

"Happy Hanukkah, dear boy," he said.

"Mmmph," Crowley said. He scowled suddenly. "I'm not singing the Dreidel Song."

"Not yet," Aziraphale agreed, topping up his glass.

"And we do Christmas too, and to _my_ specifications."

"Which are?"

"Unabashedly pagan," Crowley said with satisfaction.

Aziraphale grinned happily. "The usual, in other words?"

Crowley's scowl went back to being a smile at the thought of getting his own way. Aziraphale said nothing as he passed over a plate of mince pies heavily laced with brandy. He didn't want to say anything that might damage Crowley's fragile holiday spirit.

After all, he didn't have to take the karaoke machine back till the next morning, and he'd asked specially to have the Dreidel Song included in its repertoire. Smiling, he topped up Crowley's brandy again.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

(1) Despite what they both later claimed, Crowley was responsible for clearing up some problems the Bible translators faced, while Aziraphale had _plenty_ of dirt to dish when James was writing the _Daemonicum_.

(2) His microwave, like his fridge, had never been plugged in. This didn't prevent it from heating food perfectly in just under a second. As Crowley had never bothered reading the box past "oven" it also browned, crisped and baked to perfection. In the mornings, if he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing, it sometimes also found itself making toast of a perfect golden-brown colour.

 


End file.
